[SATLUG] backup recommendations

[Daniel J. Givens]

I didn't get tweek's reply yesterday for some reason, so I'll reply here along
with my reply to Luis.

I never said backups can be replaced with RAID. I'm saying that many people
don't need long term archival of data. I was simply stating that with a disk
based backup solution, you can utilize RAID to make it more robust in the cases
of disk failure, which was in response to someone saying I had too much trust in
disks.

To the best of my knowledge, you can't get RAID tapes. You can make copies of
tapes, but if the tape goes bad, which always seems to happen when you really
need the data, you're screwed. That is why I like disk to disk backups. In every
place that I've worked that used tapes, we had one set of tapes that sat in the
jukebox all year long. The tapes were rotated automatically, but the restores we
did never went past a week and the tapes were overwritten within 30 days or so
and we had no requirements for maintaining long term backups.

So that is why I advocate disk to disk and disk to remote disk solutions in
instances where you don't have to maintain LONG TERM archives.


Luis Garza wrote:
> Backups are important!  They are needed to maintain historical data.  This
> can be of databases, replay log files, log files, emails or any data that
> can changed and a historical record needs to be maintained.
> 
> As for remote backup stores, they are extremely important but rarely done.
>  Many consider the prospect of a complete and total disaster and the need
> to rebuild the data center in a remote location with the remote backups as
> extremely unlikely.  It is not unusual the IT departments do not plan or
> allocate funds for this purpose.  But I can name several disasters that
> have occurred requiring the data center to be rebuilt and restore at a
> remote location.
> 
> Do you remember:
> 1)  The hurricane that hit Houston and knockout the credit card centers there
> 2)  Oklahoma city bombing that knockout the federal center.
> 3)  9/11 that damaged the data centers for many financial data center in
> and around the WTC.
> 4)  New Orleans hurricane and flood.
> 
> Imagine all the small and medium sided business that do not have a remote
> backup storage and restore plan.
> 
> No backup ... No restore ... No business
> 
> I wonder how many work for companies that do not have a disaster recovery
> plan?
> 
> Luis Garza
> www.luisgarza.com
> luis at luisgarza.com
> l.garza at yahoo.com
> 
> tom weeks wrote:
>> On Saturday 03 March 2007 15:32, Daniel J. Givens wrote:
>>> I'm not saying tape backup is old and dying. Tape is good when you need
>>> to
>>> keep long term archives or you do not have the bandwidth/infrastructure
>>> to
>>> do remote backups, but still want some backups stored off site.
>>
>>> As a whole
>>> though, I do not trust tapes as much as I trust redundant disks.
>> You make it sound like RAID is a replacement for backups..
>> Not hardly!
>>
>> RAID addresses HARDWARE AVAILABILITY issues (in this context)..
>> Backups address DATA RETENTION issues.
>>
>> A user, admin or hacker deletes a bunch of files.. or you experience
>> filesystem corruption.. RAID is not going to do SQUAT for you.  Only
>> Backups
>> will save your cookies.
>>
>> Most people shooting for a high availability system will go for some form
>> of
>> RAID.  But any system where the data ITSELF is important, Backups are the
>> key.
>>
>> There are some interesting Hybrid "occasional mirror" type backup
>> solutions..
>> that combines the instant disk to disk, mirror functionality of RAID, but
>> only does this image once/week or the like.  This is an interesting way of
>> doing it.. but also has it's own sets of pros and cons.
>>
>> I personally like the idea of combining local disk to disk image/snapshot
>> type
>> of solution with then disk to tape backups from the static disk.  This
>> gives
>> you local fast "backup file access".. with the pros of off site tape
>> storage.
>>
>> Tweeks
>> --
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